Visitors to the Genesee Country Village and Museum get some practice in tapping maple trees. Photo by Beth Kingston
After a long, cold winter, one of the first signs that spring is right around the corner is the tapping of trees for the maple sap harvest. This March, visitors to Genesee Country Village & Museum can join in the fun during the Maple Sugar Festival and Pancake Breakfast. It’s a chance to enjoy the outdoors as winter begins to fade and the woods come alive with sap flowing and maple syrup boiling. This year, visitors to the Museum get an extra day each weekend to enjoy all the sweet activities, with the new addition of Fridays to the Festival lineup. Tickets for both the Festival and Breakfast will be pre-sale only, through the Museum’s website at gcv.org beginning March 1.
The Maple Sugar Festival will run from 10 am-3 pm and the Pancake Breakfast will have reserved seatings between 9:30 am and 12:30 pm, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for two weekends, March 19-21 and 26-28. Guests to GCV&M can explore the Maple History Trail as it winds through the sugarbush and nature preserve, where costumed interpreters demonstrate how various tree-tapping and sap-collecting methods evolved from the 19th Century to today. Guests can even try tapping a tree for themselves. In the Museum’s modern sugarhouse, a wood-fired sap evaporator will be boiling up sweet maple syrup, ready to be bottled and sold. After sampling the chilly, taffy-like treat “sugar on snow” at the Nature Center, guests will be able to head to the Flint Hill Store to purchase sweet confections like maple cotton candy, maple cream, and GCV&M’s own maple syrup produced on site.
In the Historic Village, maple-centric activities will abound, including Haudenosaunee storytellers sharing traditional maple tales, costumed interpreters in the historic kitchens cooking up maple-inspired dishes, plus demonstrations of late-winter crafts and trades like coopering, meat preservation, and candle-making. Families looking for “field trip-style” activities to spice up their winter will find a full day of exploring and family-friendly fun, and can even sneak in some learning as well.
There will be plenty of food options available each day, starting with an all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast featuring New York State maple syrup in the Museum’s Meeting Center. Timed seatings for the breakfast are pre-sale only, with limited capacity due to COVID restrictions. In addition, the Depot Restaurant and Freight House Pub will be offering a variety of tempting foods and hot and cold beverages. Not to be missed is a seasonal Maple Fat Ox Ale, brewed by Flying Bison Brewery just for the occasion, in addition to the Museum’s Stocking Hill Ale.
COVID precautions, including social distancing measures and mask-wearing both indoors and outdoors while on-site, will be in place throughout the Festival, and tickets will be timed entry, pre-sale only. Pancake breakfast tickets are separate from Festival tickets, and both are available on the Museum’s website gcv.org beginning March 1.
Support for the Maple Sugar Festival is provided by Market New York through I LOVE NY/ New York State’s Division of Tourism as a part of the Regional Economic Development Council awards. With the largest and most comprehensive Maple Sugar Festival in Western NY just 20 minutes from Rochester and 50 minutes from Buffalo, Genesee Country Village & Museum is the place to be to get outdoors and enjoy all things maple this season.
